French President Emmanuel Macron has appeared to backtrack on plans to introduce euthanasia and assisted suicide in France.
Months after the country’s leader instructed his government to examine whether euthanasia or assisted dying should be permitted according to a citizens’ convention backed proposals, Macron has yet to set a timeline, but has however highlighted the need for a ten-year plan on palliative care.
The citizens’ assembly, convened by the French government in September 2022, overwhelmingly backed a framework for “active assistance in dying,” voting in favour of considering both euthanasia and assisted suicide.
While assisted death can take both forms, euthanasia describes a situation where someone else takes the action which leads to a person’s unnatural death – including the injection of a lethal drug – while assisted suicide is when the individual is prescribed drugs that they must take themselves in order to die.
The county’s current end-of-life law originates from 2016, and permits patients to demand an end to treatment, and for doctors to administer deep and continuous sedation until the patient dies in short-term terminal cases.
Pressure to liberalise the law has accelerated in France since the legalisation of assisted suicide in nearby Belgium and the Netherlands in 2002.
The convention, consisting of 184 people, voted by a majority of 76 per cent in favour of some form of euthanasia or assisted dying. Following the vote, in April, the French President said that a draft bill would be drawn up by the end of the summer, stating: “Our system of support for the end of life remains ill-adapted to contemporary requirements.”
Opponents of liberalising the country’s law say it would send a negative message to French society’s most vulnerable. The French National Medical Association has announced its rejection of the involvement of doctors in active assisted dying, explaining this was “since the doctor must not intentionally bring about death by administering a lethal agent”.
Opposition has not only stemmed from the medical establishment, but also the country’s political right, and the Church.
Several outlets reported on how the euthanasia Bill had been taken off the cabinet’s schedule in September, shortly after being taken up by the cabinet, so as not to coincide with Pope Francis’s visit to France, during which he shook hands with Macron.
Macron, meanwhile, said back in April that he had instructed the government to work with parliament, stating: “The convention’s decision carries with it a requirement and an expectation for a French model for the end of life. We will respond to it.”
However, more than nine months on, speculation is growing that Macron could be backtracking on one of his campaign objectives, seeing as the proposals to change the country’s law have yet to be finalised.
A report published in The Lancet before Christmas claimed that France had “cooled” on assisted dying and euthanasia, reporting that while a draft bill was due to come before the Cabinet in December, Macron had “thrown the plans into doubt.”
A meeting of the relevant ministers with President Emmanuel Macron in mid-November had casted doubt on the content and timing of the plans, the article reported. It claimed that President Macron now wants to go “the least far as possible and the slowest as possible”, citing the comments of one government Minister who, remaining anonymous, was quoted as saying by French news channel France Info.
Melanie Heard, head of the health unit at thinktank Terra Nova – considered close to Macron – told The Lancet the current situation was “a mystery” to her.
“On the one hand it almost seems as if he (Macron) is not interested in the issue. But then everybody tells me it’s impossible to do anything on this matter without asking him personally about each article in the draft bill”, Heard said.
“The citizens’ assembly very clearly said to look at both euthanasia and assisted suicide but euthanasia has disappeared from the discourse”, she said. “There’s still a debate about whether to allow it in some exceptional circumstances but the President apparently might come out against that too.”
Heard perceives a lack of political will, according to the Lancet report.
“Clearly, no one is taking a strong political lead on this issue and that’s possibly because they’re afraid. They don’t want their name linked with a difficult issue, which it should not be, because people are in favour of it,” she said.
“Heard and other observers now see a risk of the issue going to a referendum. This would require a change to the constitution. It might also entangle the end-of-life debate with the even more contentious immigration issue, on which the far-right is seeking a referendum,” The Lancet reports.
The European Conservative, meanwhile, reports on Macron’s reception of religious representatives at the Élysée Palace for the traditional New Year’s greetings ceremony. The outlet reports that during the reception, the president announced his intention to initiate two separate legislative processes – one being the development of a palliative care plan by 2034. The other, on active assistance in dying.
“I have decided to present the ten-year palliative care strategy first, in the coming weeks, before presenting the principle of a forthcoming law,” Macron was reported as saying – while the president “did not announce” any timeline for the euthanasia law.